


Puddles and Paint

by ElinorJane



Category: Star Wars: Rebels
Genre: Mama Hera, Parental Hera Syndulla, Sibling Bonding, Sibling Love, Sibling Rivalry, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 13:48:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28600953
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElinorJane/pseuds/ElinorJane
Summary: Been writing a lot of angst lately, so here’s some fluff to make up for it!  Sibling bickering and bonding time that takes place between S1 episodes “Out of Darkness” and “Empire Day”.
Relationships: SIbling - Relationship, platonic - Relationship
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	Puddles and Paint

“Ezra!” Sabine met his eyes over the puddle of cyan paint on the floor. She’d been re-filling her airbrushes, which meant her cans of paint were clustered on the derjak table and that they all were missing their lids. Which, in turn, mean the cans and their bright contents could be easily relocated downward by the elbow of a teen boy.  
“Oops?” Ezra looked at her guiltily.  
Sabine crossed her arms and glared.  
“I’m sorry, Sabine!” Ezra protested. “I didn’t mean to, I swear! I’ll help you clean it up!” And he darted toward the closet that Hera had turned into a makeshift laundry room.  
“Ezra, wait!” Sabine called. “You can’t just—ugh!” She groaned and sprinted after him.  
She found him rummaging around in the dryer, and as she approached, he turned and held up a fistful of rags in triumph. Sabine leaned against the door and shook her head. “Uh-uh. I buy paint that stays. Water and rags won’t cut it.”  
“Then—”  
“I’ve got a chemical we’ll spray over the mess before we mop it up. Come on.”  
Ezra followed her to her room and peered in as she switched on the light and dug through one of her drawers. “Wow,” he remarked, and she paused and looked at him. He was staring at the riot of color and art on her walls. And ceiling, floor, couch. “Never knew you painted this much.”  
Sabine gave a short laugh. “And I’ve got more stuff in sketchbooks.” She found the bucket of the chemical she wanted and stood up. “Now, come on.”  
They went back to the common room and saw that the blue puddle had spread outward and was twice as large as it had been. Ezra whistled. “Whew.”  
Sabine quickly sprayed the chemical over the paint puddle, filling the common room with a sharp smell that Kanan would probably complain about later. “We’ll let this sit for a minute, and then mop it up.”  
Ezra dropped the fistful of rags onto the floor and sat cross-legged near the puddle. “So why don’t you buy paint that washes off with water?”  
“’Cause I don’t want it washed off.” Sabine also sat down, across from Ezra, and watched the chemical soak into the color. “Well, most of the time.”  
Ezra snickered. “Kanan told me that he once walked in the way of your airbrush and got a face full of green paint. He said it washed out, though.”  
“Mostly,” Sabine snorted. “He did look perpetually nauseated for a week afterwards. And if I’d known he’d walk in the way like that, I’d have used a lighter green so that he matched Hera.” She twisted her face into a conspiratorial smirk.  
Ezra doubled over with smothered laughter, almost going face-first into the paint and the chemical. He straightened at once, though, and pinched his nose; the smell was sharp and made the inside of your nose feel like it was on fire. Sabine had long since gotten used to it, and she gave a long dramatic sniff and rested her hands calmly on her knees.  
Ezra sent her a mock glare and removed his fingers from his nose. “You tagged anyone else with paint before?”  
“Yeah, bucketheads. Got caught at such close quarters once, I didn’t have time to draw my blasters. Had the paint gun in my hand instead, so I turned his visor a nice shade of pink. Then I drew my gun.”  
“Wait, why would you have your paint gun on a mission?”  
“I like to tag stuff with my Starbird symbol.” She gestured to the far wall where she’d already painted her inspiration in brilliant oranges and golds. Ezra twisted around to look at it properly and then faced her again.  
“Yeah, but…doesn’t that make the job harder?”  
“Sure. But it’s a challenge. I never turn down a challenge.” Sabine reached across the puddle, grabbed a rag, and began scrubbing. Ezra followed suit. “Anyway, I want the Empire to know they don’t own everything. They can’t blank out everything with those colorless buckethead suits or their own shadows.”  
“That’s poetic,” Ezra remarked.  
Sabine shrugged. “It’s the truth.” They scrubbed in silence for a moment before she sat back on her heels and eyed him quizzically. “And how does a kid like you recognize poetry?”  
“Hey!” Ezra sat up, thoroughly offended. “I know a lot more than you’d think!”  
“Yeah, sure.”  
“No, really,” Ezra insisted. He sighed and suddenly looked dejected, as if he’d offered a gift and she’d dumped a bucket of cold water over him in return. “My…my mom liked poetry. Old stuff, from Lothal’s history. She used to read it to me, and…well…” he shrugged.  
“Oh.”  
Ezra pushed his rag into the middle of the blue puddle and sat back with his hands on his knees. “There was one poem I could never forget…something about a war long ago, and the poem compared it to a sunset that darkened the seas to blood before abandoning the world to darkness. It scared me, actually.”  
“Yeah, that’s intense.”  
“But there was another poem I liked—something around the lines of ‘the night reveals more than one spark of hope’. I asked Mom what that meant, and she said to look at the sky myself one night, and I’d see. But I didn’t get it until years later. It meant the twin moons.”  
“Metaphors, huh.”  
“I guess.”  
Ezra shook himself and stretched his arms above his head. And promptly dislodged another paint can that plummeted off the table and hit the floor. Sabine squawked, and Ezra snapped his eyes shut as magenta paint shot everywhere. The can rolled away, leaking bright color. Sabine looked down at herself and groaned; her armor had gained new pink highlights—as had her black jumpsuit, her hands, and possibly the dye job in her hair. Ezra carefully opened his eyes and glanced nervously at her. “Oops.”  
Sabine sighed. “I don’t want to hear those words from you ever again, kid.”  
“Okay, how about ‘uh-oh’?”  
“Shut up.”  
Ezra grimaced and scrutinized the damage, looking from the base of the derjak table with its new spatter décor, to the fresh puddle on the floor, to his own orange jumpsuit. His expression morphed to horror as he took in the magenta spots. Sabine snickered, not bothering to hide her amusement; the colors clashed and pink looked ridiculous on Ezra. But then she sat upright in alarm and exclaimed, “Wait, kid, don’t—”  
Too late; he’d already swiped his hands across his jumpsuit, trying to brush away the paint. He looked in dismay at the large smears on the fabric and his hands, the palms stained a brilliant pink. “Oh, great.”  
Sabine snickered again but said, “It’s okay—I’ve got stuff that’ll take it out of your clothes. And off your hands. And,” she added, looking him over, “Out of your hair.”  
Ezra groaned and clenched his fists to keep from touching anything else. “Make it quick, will you, Sabine? If Zeb sees me like this—”  
“Yeah, I know.” She got to her feet, looking ruefully at her own stained clothes. “Come on, let’s douse this new puddle and then clean up.”  
Two minutes later, the sharp smell in the common room had doubled, but the room was deserted. Ezra and Sabine each fled to their cabins and changed clothes, and Sabine grabbed the chemicals to clean fabric, hair, and skin. The teenagers met in the fresher, and Sabine chucked their stained clothes and the liquid cleaner in the tub and turned on the faucet. Ezra, clad in simple orange shirt and tan shorts, hoisted himself onto the counter and grinned at various bottles of cleaner. “I hate to think why you had to get all these.”  
“Well, Kanan’s already told you his story.” Sabine looked in the mirror and huffed to see a spray of pink slashed across her beautiful ombre hair dye. “And I had to get a solvent that takes this stuff out of Zeb’s fur as well.”  
Ezra laughed. “Hey, if he catches us like this, will you tell me that story, for leverage?”  
“Deal.” Sabine turned on the sink faucet. “Douse your hair, kid.”  
They were in the middle of scrubbing energetically, when they heard a shout from Hera. Both jerked their heads up.  
“Sabine?” Hera’s voice came from the common room and sounded thoroughly irritated.  
“Shush!” Sabine hissed at Ezra before calling nonchalantly toward the door, “Yeah?”  
“What happened out here?”  
Sabine shot a look at Ezra. He gripped the edge of the counter, watching her tensely, waiting for her to oust him. The image of a trapped Loth-kitten sprang into her mind. “Uh, little accident!” she called back. “The cleaner’s soaking in, and I’ll mop it all up once I finish here!”  
“All right.” Hera sounded somewhat mollified. “But do it immediately, young lady!”  
“Yes, Hera,” Sabine called back, rolling her eyes, though of course Hera couldn’t see it.  
Ezra let out a gust of a sigh. Sabine laughed and whacked his arm playfully. “Yeah, you’re still gonna help.”  
Four minutes later, the two of them—paint-free but rather damp—snuck back into the common room. It was deserted, and the two colorful puddles still graced the floor. So did a bright line of boot prints. Pink prints stretched between the magenta puddle and the cyan puddle; then an odd shade of lavender prints strayed from the blue puddle and ended in the middle of the common room floor. Hera’s boots—stained pink and purple—sat next to the prints. She must have wandered through both puddles before she noticed the color.  
“Karabast,” Sabine muttered.  
“I guess we gotta clean that up too,” Ezra said.  
Sabine nodded. “I’ll get the leather-cleaner stuff.”  
“Wow,” Ezra remarked as she headed back to her cabin.  
By an unspoken agreement, they cleaned Hera’s boots first and left them near the cockpit doors for her to find. Then they scrubbed the floor and the base of the derjak table, working in energetic and guilty silence. Bit by bit, the colored mess vanished.  
“Hey, Sabine.”  
She looked up and saw Ezra had a gleam in his eye. “If you want a painting challenge, I’ve got one for you.”  
“Oh?”  
“Yeah.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Remember that TIE fighter Zeb and I, uh, crashed? Well…”


End file.
